The Many Faces of Camille Saint-Saëns

French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) is certainly one of the most fascinating and important figures in the music history of the 19th and early 20th century. World-renowned for "The Carnival of the Animals", his oeuvre encompasses more than 600 compositions, many of them key works for the respective musical genre. The present volume brings together 21 articles: they investigate not only Saint-Saëns’ compositions – from operas and other stage works to his chamber and piano music and to his recordings – but also his writings and his many travels all over the world, which provided the basis for the many aspects of exoticism and orientalism of his music. The presentation of these essays can be seen as a seminal building block for further studies, also in view of the centenary of his death to be commemorated in 2021.


On Stage – Operas

• Hugh Macdonald, Saint-Saëns the Dramatist
• Erin Brooks, Camille Saint-Saëns and Staging History: Henry VIII and Ascanio at the Opéra
• Mara Lacchè, Saint-Saëns e l’esotismo ‘ellenico’ di Déjanire
• Claire Paolacci, Camille Saint-Saëns et l’Opéra de Paris (1915-1945), un étendard de la musique française

Down the Aisle – Church Music

• Sara Ramos Contioso, Saint-Saëns’s Messe de Requiem: un nuevo modelo religioso en la tradición romántica del género
• Megan Sarno, Saint-Saëns, Criticism, and Catholicism

In the Concert – Instrumental Music

• Michael Stegemann, «La chimère de la pureté du style et de la perfection de la forme» : Saint-Saëns und die großen Formen der Instrumentalmusik
• Elisabetta Righini, Fossili e rovine: trattamenti metamorfici nel Quartetto per archi e pianoforte in Mi maggiore Op. Post. di Camille Saint-Saëns
• Julie Oustinoff, Les Deux Trios avec piano de Camille Saint-Saëns (1864-1892): pour une filiation française?
• Rohan H. Stewart-MacDonald, Lisztian Approaches in the Instrumental Works of Camille Saint-Saëns: ‘Thematic Transformation’ and the Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78 (‘Organ’)
• Rémy Campos, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Technique: A Retrospectively Constituted Object?
• Geoffrey Burleson, Saint-Saëns, Proto-Impressionism, and ‘le jeu perlé ’
• Temina Cadi Sulumuna, Les Œuvres pour harpe de Camille Saint-Saëns et ses relations professionnelles avec les harpistes à la lumière de la correspondance

En Route – Travelling through the World

• Alberto Massarotto, L’esotismo musicale di Saint-Saëns come diario di bordo tra vita e opera
• Stéphane Leteuré, Camille Saint-Saëns en Égypte: les sens du voyage (1890-1914)
• Oreste Palmiero, Camille Saint-Saëns e l’Italia: analisi di un rapporto (attraverso i carteggi)
• José Ignacio Suárez García, La primera visita de Saint-Saëns a España en 1880: el descubrimiento del pianista virtuoso
• David Cranmer, A Relationship Spanning more than 40 Years: The Case of Portugal
• Mitsuya Nakanishi, Saint-Saëns et ses œuvres littéraires sur le Japon
• Antonio Ferrara, Saint-Saëns, presidente della Société des instruments anciens